Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday February 27, 2012 @05:43PM
from the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-then-on-again dept.

New submitter Bastian227 writes "A ship anchoring in a restricted area disrupted an East African high-speed Internet connection. The damaged fiber optic cable is one of three new undersea cables in the area off Kenyan coast. Repairs could take up to 14 days. 'The Teams cable had been rerouting data from three other cables severed 10 days ago in the Red Sea between Djibouti and the Middle East. Together, the four fiber-optic cables channel thousands of gigabytes of information per second and form the backbone of East Africa's telecom infrastructure. Telecom companies were reeling over the weekend as engineers attempted to reroute data south along the East African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.'"

Considering Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda being more Western friendly and advanced over their neighbors it makes them hot spots for radical islamic groups. I'm sure all the new updated monitoring hardware on the other servered cables will be matched here as well.

Considering Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda being more Western friendly and advanced over their neighbors it makes them hot spots for radical islamic groups. I'm sure all the new updated monitoring hardware on the other servered cables will be matched here as well.

I recall a political science class with a circular diagram... something about extreme fascism and extreme socialism going about achieving their ends using the same methods. Ironic these people are so in favor of going backward 1,600 years and using all this modern, western developed technology to do a lot of their communicating - they pass it off as more 'Ends justifying the means' BS Hard for me to consider them anything more than they really are on the surface - murderers, power hungry, dictatorial, et

I recall a political science class with a circular diagram... something about extreme fascism and extreme socialism going about achieving their ends using the same methods

Correct. Fascism and socialism are two sides of the same coin. It goes by the name of statism. Statism is pure unabashed *evil* and should be fought with the sacrifice of blood from every man, women, and child whom values freedom. You just don't earn freedom for life. You must always act as a counter force to maintain it. For civil nations

Same conspiracy theory got floated when Egypt's internet got cut several times in as many weeks. I believe it was chalked up to the fact that ship anchors tend to drag on the bottom until they catch on something, which also happens to be a major threat to coral reefs everywhere as well as undersea cables and pipelines.

where's that quote about never ascribing something to conspiracy where idiocy will suffice

It is Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org], though it says to never attribute to malice that what can easily be explained by stupidity.

I would say that an undersea cable being cut isn't newsworth on its own, but cut a bunch in the same place in roughly the same time and it becomes news. The cables are cut all the time (I do wonder if the ship that cuts the cable has to pay the bill for repairs?) but a lot of the time it is possible to simply re-route and there isn't too much hassle.

The cable owners should claim against the ship, whose owners in turn claim off their third party liability insurance. Should it not be the same as a road accident where if a car or truck damages your property (either your vehicle or it hits your wall/house etc) then you claim from the driver/vehicle owner and the claim is paid by their insurance.

It's just statistics (probably). The Atlantic ocean alone average 50 damaged cables a year, you're going to have times where cables are breaking one day after another without pushing into anything statistically significant. Take 50 people in a room and ask them their birthdays, odds are (very, very) high you'll find two that share, it doesn't mean anything. You'll find several groups who all share birthdays on within the a week of each other. It doesn't mean anything other than humans are bad at thinkin

Takes me back to Iran 2008 when all of the fiber cables going in to Iran got 'accidentally' severed at once. Huge denials about there being anything more than an unfortunate coincidence, yet not long afterwards when Iran held their elections there was a wave of twitter led demos contesting the result (the result was subsequently found to be correct by that Carter mob) All sorts of co ordinated net led attacks on Iranian government. Afterwards it becomes public that Congress had thrown a coupla hundred mi

The National Reconnaissance Office needed to tap in again. If you splice into a cable that is active, people would notice. A lot of U.S. intellegence agencies want to know what is going on in the Middle East. The NRO and the Navy get the job.

When I was in the Navy, on Oahu, a friend of mine was a research assistant and professor at University of Hawai'i on Oahu. They were doing research on the Hawaiian Monk Seal, and had to attach fake rocks with electronic gear to the reef.

They were working in 300 feet of water, which is extremely deep for SCUBA, and highly dangerous even with mixed gasses. Bottom time is around 15 minutes, and deco times are in hours. Because of this, they needed to be near a decompression chamber in case of an emergency,

Since you didn't reply the comment you are trolling, I have to assume you are referring to the joke about "no more Nigerian scams!"

Actually, I believe they are Nigerian scams because they originate from Nigeria. Also, Nigerian people are referred to as Nigerians because they are from Nigeria. I don't really see how race plays any part in those two facts.

Because black people are from Africa. Any time you point out something bad about any area which is primarily black you are automatically a racist. It's actually a method used, ironically, by racists to project their hate onto someone else.

Nevermind that Nigeria is in Africa, and that no one said anything like "See all those black people will have to stop trying to scam us whites now that they have no Internet connection."

The pseudo-intellectual trendies on here will always try to point out some grand

My name is Abu Mkumbu. I am writing to you as the director of the national Kenyan cable and Internet company. I am asking your assistance in the following matter. I was trying to move funds from my great grand fathers estate via electronic transfer, when a ship tore the cable that holds the secure bank line to my swiss bank account. Since I have no more access to my swiss bank account, I need someone trustworthy to assist me in getting these funds (US$14,113.142.78) out of my inflation ridden country. As a

You make them sound like Muad'Dib, but all they did was write a song that includes the image of an anchor or mooring scarping the floor of the ocean and severing an undersea cable as a simile for spinal cord damage. That sort of thing happens from time to time.

What exactly does "restricted area" mean in this case? If this means ships are prohibited from dropping anchor there and the ship did anyway, what is the consequence to the captain and ship owner? Loss of license for the captain for violating restricted area? Jail time for vandalism? Ship's owner on the hook for the cost of repair? Seems like if this sort of thing is becoming common than some severe punishment might encourage others to be more careful in the future...especially if it means loss of career and/or freedom for the captain and significant loss of money to the owner.

are doomed to repeat splicing. Seriously; how can any 'professional' still be designing undersea cabling having no shallows protection against anchor strikes, regardless the intent? Lowest bidder effect? Immorally lucrative service contract? What?